Person of interest: Jeremy Pargo

We here at Courtside continue our sporadic look at players the Spurs have auditioned in pre-draft workouts with a look at Gonzaga point guard Jeremy Pargo.

The name Pargo should sound familiar to Spurs fans. Last offseason, the Spurs made a free-agent run at his older brother Jannero. With Jannero Pargo’s contract with the Russian club Dynamo Moscow up, that is a name that could come around again this offseason.

In the meantime, the Spurs will take a gander at the other Pargo.

Jeremy Pargo played four years at Gonzaga, establishing himself as one of the top point guards in the college game. Projected to drop into the second round, he has “sleeper or bust” written all over him.

Unlike the player previously previewed in this space, Ben Woodside, Pargo does have an NBA body — 6-foot-2 and a stocky 220 pounds. He has an explosive first step, is an excellent penetrator and would be one of the more athletic players on the Spurs roster right now. In that, he is like a poor man’s Tony Parker, back before Parker developed a steady mid-range game.

That is the upside of Jeremy Pargo.

The downside? Though he was listed as a point guard in college, Pargo spent much of his time playing off the ball. He’s big for a point guard, but is probably too short to play the “2” at the NBA level. Much like George Hill, Pargo is a wing player trapped in a point guard’s body, and will have to spend his rookie season learning how to run an NBA team.

With Hill still a work in progress, it is unlikely the Spurs would want two identical projects on their roster at the same time.